PEAK AREA A ffiine day on Kiinder..Photo::Austiin Knott.. NEWSLETTER February 2017 [email protected] Rocking Chair issues at hand being the planning Rob Greenwood developments around Dovestones in the northern Peak. With over 100 houses and Even though it feels 120 executive houses outlined within the like a long time ago scheme it is undoubtedly a cause for now, it seems only appropriate concern, not least for the local residents to wish everyone a happy new year. who brought this to our attention, but to This year marks a bit of a change climbers and walkers that visit the area. for the BMC Peak Area meetings, Finally, from urban developments to as we will – for the first time in upland restoration, and our guest speakers a long, long time – have had a for the evening. Moors for the Future will consistent year-round venue: be attending to explain what they’ve been The Maynard in Grindleford. doing, and what many of you have probably That said, our focus is still very much seen, in/around the Peak with their fantastic Peak-wide and this meeting is a testimony work that will hopefully see our open to that commitment, with one of the key moorland flourish again. Next meeting: Wednesday 8 February, 7.30 p.m. The Maynard, Grindleford, S32 2HE Stanage Plantation. Photo: Dave Parry. Access News public at a full forum meeting chaired by Henry Folkard Matthew Croney from the national park’s property services division. At the time High magazine was running a campaign against changes to the roadside Stanage North Lees landscape, and promoting, with the BMC, In the year 2000 I was asked by the Peak resistance to pay and display parking. Area meeting to represent the BMC on a There was a lot of conflict – though some new initiative called the Stanage Forum. of this was due to action by the Highways I threw the towel in this last December Authority, which in the Peak District 2016. Here is a personal account of it. National Park is distinct from the It’s been a roller coaster of an experience. national park authority. In the early years the task of finding There was also many a cross word consensus amongst a group with a common between ornithologists, hang glider people passion for Stanage but very different and climbers; over parking; and about perspectives on priorities resulted in blood North Lees campsite. Dave Turnbull came on the carpet – but only metaphorically. to several meetings to give support (I seem The method of working was for a to remember at one stage the count for steering group to thrash out details of meetings got to 70), but most of the time how North Lees should be managed, and it fell to me to fight the climbers’ corner. what needed doing. It had representatives At one meeting the ornithologist was from the climbing and walking communities, quite blunt. Stanage, he said, was for the the local community, conservationists, birds and nothing else.They got there ornithologists, hang gliders, and estate staff. before climbers, and there should be a They were appointed by members of the 10-foot-high concrete wall topped with 2 Peak Area Newsletter February 2017 barbwire erected all around Stanage to the NT, who alone could dedicate as to stop any person getting in. Restrictions inalienable. NT would be supported by on climbing must be year round, and not RSPB and BMC who would effectively run just during nesting. it as a triumvirate. In another exchange, on ring ouzels, Then all change: Matthew Croney left, the hang glider guy asked how many there and authority members decided they would were.The ornithologist said there were keep North Lees themselves and run it as only about six – to which the other guy a demonstration upland farm to match their said if that was all there were they weren’t demonstration farms on Warslow Moor in worth bothering about. Fifteen years on the south-west Peak, and because some I can still vividly remember the fall out of the members had a barely disguised from that. antipathy towards the NT. The BMC line was that conservation To the steering group it seemed all and recreation were not mutually exclusive, constructive vision evaporated. There and both could exist side by side to the were staff changes, and of course authority benefit of all. Fast forward to 2016 when members kept changing.The only focus Kim Leyland’s study showed there were seemed to be on income generation, but more ring ouzels nesting in the Stanage the destination of income seemed to be and Burbage area last year than there the authority’s head office at Aldern House had been in 2002. I rest my case. and nothing to do with Stanage. One staff It took a while to agree a way forward, member was reported to have said, but we did, and put together a 10-year ‘Who are these climbers, who do they management plan which was agreed by think they are? We are going to make them members of the national park authority. pay for us.’ Of course we already did, and There was a crisis in about 2005, or still do, through taxation. perhaps a year or two later, when the Along with this, as I have indicated, authority decided it wanted to sell off we kept having to go to authority members, part of the estate, including the campsite perpetually, it seemed to us, bent on selling and hay meadows.We had to fight the battle off bits of Stanage to swell their internal to keep North Lees intact not just then, coffers, rather than make the place work but several times over. It was wearisome. for wildlife and people.That was not easy. The national park seemed to like selling One is only allowed to speak for three things off – Losehill Hall being a classic minutes to members at committee and example – and taking the proceeds which one’s work is cut out when, as happened evaporated with nothing to show for the loss once, one member empowered to make a of what had been a really first-rate facility. decision said,‘Where is Stanage, what is it? Come the 2010s, the authority was I have never heard of it.’ reviewing all its remaining assets. Eastern Eventually officers told the steering Moors went to a unique partnership of the group they would no longer service it. National Trust (NT) and RSPB – supported It would have to constitute itself as an by the BMC (Adam and I were involved in independent body. So we did, and so it the interviews for the manager post).The remains.Then we had a stricture we must Roaches went to Staffordshire Wildlife Trust break even financially. But it was well nigh and we were given to understand Stanage impossible to discover how ‘cost’ was North Lees would go quantified.There was no transparency, http://community.thebmc.co.uk/peak 3 though the authority was after all a public body. It was only after public pressure from a well-attended meeting of a full forum that we began to get any idea. A new senior member of staff, Mary Bagley, was appointed, and she came and talked to our area meeting, but more important than that she listened, and acted to make things better.We got accounting systems changed so that money taken through North Lees or donated to it, was actually spent on it. Things looked up, and looked up even more when Mary appointed Rebekah Newman as property manager. There was, all of a sudden, vision, dynamism Climber on Black Slab, Stanage. and direction from the authority, and Photo: Dave Parry. a sense that at last they actually cared. We revised the now time-elapsed members, for whom we had delivered management plan and, working in everything they had asked of us, and were partnership with each other and as a told internal organisation was for officers, team, achieved a huge amount. Meantime not members. It was nothing to do with Mary’s face seemed not to fit at Aldern them. Just like Pontius Pilate 2,000 years House: Mary who had done so much to ago, they washed their hands. help the authority through achieving its Bill Gordon will be going sometime soon. objectives at Stanage, and help it to He is part time now.The other half of his recover its repute with the public, was off. post is filled by Martyn Sharpe – but only Still Rebekah soldiered on, displaying huge on a temporary basis, not the full-time basis energy, and achieving much with vision for that was promised. And the ranger service, the future, and communicating well with with which many recreation users have had a public that cared about Stanage. positive contacts, is being ‘reviewed’. As a reward, and after decades of loyal I wonder what that can mean.The focus service to the authority, she has been got now seems to me to be not on the national rid of. Instead there are now four people, park the authority exists to look after, but all on higher wages, bits of whose jobs on the institution of the authority itself, relate to Stanage, but Stanage as a place cocooned in Aldern House. has ceased to exist in the official mind. It’s all an unnecessary crying shame. It’s just another bit of the national park. Personally, I could not retain my personal No one person is responsible for it overall, integrity and loyalties and remain.